90th Birthday Celebrations

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James Newton, master flute player and current Professor of Music at UCLA, toured with the Mingus Dynasty Band back in the 1990’s and has been a Mingus fan ever since. He is also the Director of the Department of Ethnomusicology at UCLA and has just written that a Charles Mingus Ensemble is being formed to carry on Mingus music and the Mingus workshop approach to tackling music! Coincidentally, the 7-piece Mingus Dynasty will perform at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Friday, March 16, 2012, including musicians Alex Foster, Donald Edwards, Avishai Cohen, Boris Kozlov, Ku-umba Frank Lacy and more! To be continued……!

Complete Charles Mingus Columbia and RCA Albums Collection to be released March 2012. April 22, 2012 would have been Mingus’s 90th Birthday. Direct to Consumer 10CD set and include the following albums:

NPR is rebroadcasting the Mingus Big Band from the Jazz Standard – the Grammy-nominated music – as the first JazzSet of 2011. JazzSet airs on more than 100 stations nationwide and in Europe as well. Listeners should check with their stations for date and time of the broadcast(s).On WBGO and wbgo.org, JazzSet featuring the MBB airs on Sun, Jan 2, at 6pm and on Wed, Jan 5, at 6:30pm.Michael Bourne is the MC and the Grammy-nominated host is Dee Dee Bridgewater.The CD and mp3 downloads of the album go here:http://mingusmingusmingus.com/MingusBands/liveatstandard.html

“Three NEA grants (American Masterpieces) for chamber music in 2010-2011 support projects devoted to the works of Charles Mingus, including the four-concert series at the MacPhail Center for Music. Presented as part of its annual Jazz Thursdays program, “Meditations and Revelations” is the brainchild of bassist/MacPhail jazz coordinator Adam Linz, a longtime devotee of the “one-man avant garde,” to quote John McDonough in his article about the MacPhail grant in this month’s issue of Chamber Music magazine. In explaining the rationale for presenting the music of Mingus live, Linz told McDonough, “It’s the ability to find spontaneity in music that’s fifty years old [and to] take it somewhere it hasn’t been. That’s the spirit of Mingus… You have a band that rehearses without charts and adds to the performance…we want to keep that spirit that it may all fall apart….”article and photos by Andrea Canter

50 great moments in jazz: Charles Mingus’s The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady: It’s almost impossible to choose just one great moment from the legacy of this pioneering bassist and compositional genius….

WASHINGTON SQUARE MUSIC FESTIVAL ENDS 50th PARK SEASON WITH THE CHARLES MINGUS ORCHESTRA, A FREE JAZZ CONCERTOn Tuesday, July 27 at 8 pm in Washington Square,the Charles Mingus Orchestra closes the Washington Square Music Festival’s 52nd season by performing works by the late Charles Mingus. The concert is free and celebrates a great American composer, who left his legacy in the worlds of both jazz and the civil rights struggle.Seating is on a first-come, first served basis in front of the Holley Statue, in the northwest quadrant of the Square. The Festival is under the auspices of the Washington Square Association, Inc. Rainspace is St. Joseph’s Church, 371 Sixth Avenue.
Festival info: 212-252-3621 www.washingtonsquaremusicfestival.org

Mingus Big Band/Mingus Mondays
Jazz Standard 116 E. 27th St., (212) 576-2232 Mondays
Also being honored at the JJA Awards is Sue Mingus, the widow of the late bassist-composer, who has seen to it that her husband’s music is more widely performed now than it was during the jazz iconoclast’s lifetime. (Even the Django Reinhardt-inspired Hot Club of Detroit is playing “Nostalgia in Times Square” on their new album, “It’s About That Time.”) “Mingus Monday” has become a tradition at Jazz Standard…. The 14-piece big band, which features saxophonists Scott Robinson and Wayne Escoffery, is also represented by its 10th album, “Live at Jazz Standard,” and demonstrates that, alongside Ellington and Monk, there’s no composer more worthy than Mingus of being a one-man franchise.

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Yale Jazz Ensemble Concert To Feature Music Of Thad Jones, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington
On CampusThe Yale Jazz Ensemble, directed by Thomas C. Duffy, will present its winter concert on Wednesday, Feb. 10 at 7:30 p.m., in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall. The program will feature charts by Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Thad Jones, Phil Woods, Lester Young, Slide Hampton, and more. Admission is free and no tickets are required.The Yale Jazz Ensemble is an 18 piece big band that performs a wide variety of music, from Yale’s Benny Goodman archive to the newest and most progressive jazz compositions. The ensemble has performed extensively in the U.S. and internationally at such noted venues as New York’s Village Vanguard and Iridium Jazz Clubs and London’s Ronnie Scott’s.Call 203-432-4113 for more information.

February 9, 2010 Jazz for Curious ListenersJazz on Film: Charles Mingus/Billie Holiday
7:00 – 8:30pmLocation: NJMIH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300Hearing is one thing – seeing is another. What better to spend an evening that watching these two iconic figures in all of their originality and genius?

WWMD? A gaggle of devotees of Charles Mingus, the legendary jazz bassist-composer-rights activist, will brainstorm and barnstorm in the Jazz Composers Workshop, which gets under way at about 7:30 p.m. in Central Park Grill, 2519 Main St. On hand will be Nelson Starr, John Werick, Michael McNeill, John Anderson, Joe Hochulski, Kelly Bucheger and Tim Clarke.

6-9pm Wednesday, January 27th on WKCR 89.9FM NY.
“The Musician’s Show.”Conrad Herwig will guest host Mingus Big Band’s Conrad Herwig LIVE on-air on WKCR Radio next Wednesday 6-9PM. He’ll play his own music, recordings he has played on with the Mingus bands (such as the soon-to-be-released 2009 New Year’s Eve concert at Jazz Standard, broadcast on NPR), and other music that has inspired him.